March is going pretty well so far. I haven't made much of a dent in the Annotated Sherlock Holmes Volume 2, but I have no plans this weekend and everybody else should be out of the house. 

Books Read: 5

Books DNF: 1

Reviews Written: 6

People I annoyed on Amazon: 6

I absurdly happy about that last one. Does anybody else bother to post reviews on Amazon or do you just stick to this site?

This isn’t the worse Stargate book I’ve read -- that honor is reserved for Alliances – but it’s nowhere close to the best. The Aschen are back in Stargate SG-1 Relativity, trying to decimate the earth population through a convoluted plan that depends on Earth signing a treaty with a group of nomadic people called the Pack. In an effort to stop this disastrous deal, parties unknown try to sabotage the treaty signing. It’s an interesting premise, nothing really new for this series, but it should have provided an enjoyable read.

I didn’t like Jade from the start of this book, everything from her name to her hair, she can change the color at will, reminds me of bad fanfiction -- learning her origins did not help.

What really annoyed me is the way Sg-1 seemed to lose all common sense when dealing with her. SG-1 has had multiple experiences with the Aschen, nanites, and people probing their minds – most of them not good. So why would they ever agree to enter a known saboteurs mind so she could prove to them that she was telling the truth. They took Jade’s word that she could not lie when they enter her mind and trusted her not use the connection to take control of them or steal codes and classified information from their minds. That last point was never brought up as a possible outcome of the connection. I know over the series SG-1 has taken their share of risks, but this struck me as monumentally stupid. Also Jade never satisfactorily answered the question why she couldn’t send a note back from the future to warn the SGC. It worked before and the SGC isn’t full of idiots; just write down the planet designation and Aschen – problem solved.

I found the characterization of SG-1 to be a little off -- not as bad as it was in Alliances, but off enough to be annoying. Also the author couldn’t seem to make up his mind whether to refer to Dr. Jackson as Jackson or Daniel, this was highly annoying. For the most part SG-1 is pretty consistent in how they refer to each other and what they call each other. I can’t remember a single time Teal’c has called Daniel just Jackson or Major Carter just Major it was off putting seeing that.

For all its flaws the book did have its good parts. Like I said before it was an interesting premise and the battle at the end of the book was well done. The discussions about changing events in the past and how that would affect the future timeline were, as always, interesting. I gave this book three stars.

February Wrap-Up

February was a good month for me. I completed 14 book and 3 graphic novels. Out of those 17 completed works: I rated six as 5 stars, two as 4 stars, and one as 4 1/2 stars. I only had two books that I DNF, which is awesome. My average for the month for DNF is around 5. Going into March I have four books on my Currently Reading List.

I'm still doing the buddy read for American Gods, this will take a while because our schedules don't always sync up. If we're lucky we can get together once every other week. I'm still enjoying it and I'm kind of getting frustrated that we can't get together more frequently. I'm also slowly going through The Annotated Sherlock Holmes Volume II. I've been reading one story every other day and I fully expect to be finished with this volume before the end of the month. I'm finding that the formatting of this volume is really annoying me and I don't know why; it's set up the same way the previous volume was. Each page has two columns, the story is printed on the inner column and any notes on the outer column. This formatting is kept up throughout the book, even when there aren't any notes, so some pages have a huge empty space on the outer edges of the pages. I started An Elementary Study in Chemistry in February as well. I've been picking it up and reading a chapter at a time whenever I feel in the mood. This one I fully expect to be reading well into April. The final book on my Currently Reading List is The Force Awakens, which should be completed before the end of this week. 

2016 Reading Challenge Update

1. Participate in four readathons. 

 I've participated in two readathons so far this year. In January I did the Bout of Books, which ran from January 4th-10th. In February I participated in the Rainbowthon 2.0, which ran February 7th-14th.

2. Finish "The Wheel of Time" Series.

  I left off at book 5 in the series sometime last year. In March I'm planning to start up the series again, though I might need to refresh my memory of what happened in previous books. 

3. Read The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.

 I haven't done this yet and will probably not happen until later in the year.

4. Reduce Library Shelf by half.

 I've already removed 21 books from my library wishlist, most of them I couldn't remember why I had added them in the first place.

5. Read Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.

 I started and finished this in February. I'm kind of mad at myself for putting this off for so long. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will be picking up more of Dickens work in the near future to read.

6. Finish one series other than "The Wheel of Time".

 This was done in January. I completed the Harper Hall Series, which had been sitting on my shelf unread for a ridiculous number of years. 

7.Read at least 100 books.

 Two months into the year and I've already read 32 books. I don't expect to keep this pace throughout the year. Usually around April my reading slows down, so it will be nice to have a good cushion going into the warmer months.

March Reading List

I have nine books on my March Reading List, one I've started already. The Dragon Throne, I won in a giveaway over a month ago. I know the author was expecting a review, so I feel bad about putting it off for so long, but there were other books that wanted to read before I dived into that one. After an almost three month hiatus I'm planning to jump back into the "Wheel of Time" series with The Lord of Chaos. Due to waiting so long, I will probably have to find a summary of the previous book on-line to refresh my memory and will be reading this book towards the end of the month. Relativity, Planet X, The Masterharper of Pern and Infinite Jest have all been on my shelf for over two years so it will be nice to clear them. March should be a good month